Madden NFL 18 Gameplay Changes - What Do You Want to See?

[howboutdat]

Real Physics


There still does not feel like the players movements, momentum, etc is based in any physics at all. I still see little CBs easily take down a full speed running , head down derrick henry like he was a paper weight. I get it, its probably a hard thing to mimic, but weight, speed , momentum should be felt in game and to me it just isnt . This even plays in what others have mentioned earlier, about LBs being able to run stride for stride with a fast smaller WR, cut directions on a dime ( without really planting foot) and change direction and not lose a step.That is one thing that allows people to cover 4 areas of the field with 1 player. It needs to be worked on heavily imo.


Make man coverage work better again


Ok , so in madden 13, man coverage was like putting super glue on a defender and wr.Everyone used it and hardly used zone. It seems like since then, its been all about zones, which did need to be more effective. However it seems now, if you run man d , more than likely unless its a wr or hb screen, your gonna get burnt.Does not matter how good your players Man coverage rating is , he will be toasted. There needs to be a good balance. Part of this really ties into making player attributes actually matter more in how things play out, as others before me here have mentioned as well.Man coverage should be just as useable as zone. I play in an online league , and talked with others, most people run a ton of zone and toss in some man just to mix it up some according to rules, but no one is using man as main d anymore due to its lack of effectiveness.


Oline blocking still needs alot of work

After the last update many felt it was improved alot. Well , ive seen a ton of instances since then , where oline guys are still blocking no one at all , just watching the game basically. Somehow 3 man rushes are still almost your most effective blitz( pressure on qb) you can get outside the lame Nickel blitz that is widely overused now due to how greatly effective it is.Which im sure they will " fix" in 18 , but then there will just be another one found come october to replace it. Its like they dont know who to block half the time.There are times it plays out well, but alot of times it still doesnt. They really need to spend alot more time working on oline blocking.Again, going back to making attributes actually matter alot more.


Player button inputs should work every time


This is one of my biggest pet peeves with madden.When I am usering a player , I am his Awareness, if i press the button to go for the pick, that player should do it , every single time i press the button for it. If I hit the button to play WR, that player should do just that every single time I press the button.If I press the button to tackle and direction for him to go , he should do exactly that every single time. I am his brain, I am controlling his "thoughts".If I tell him to do it, he should. I cant even begin to count the times ive been burned for touchdowns, because i had a defender in perfect position , only for him to just stand there and act like he just went brain dead, and watch the ball fly right past his head , and watch the WR catch it and take it to the house. Its the most infuriating thing in this game to me.Im not playing to watch cpu play out the game. If i see a loose ball on the ground, i should be able to hit a button and tell the player to dive on the ball. Sure he may not come up with it, but the player should not just stand there looking at the ball doing nothing. Make user input buttons work 100% of the time as far as making them execute the same action that matches the button i press. I would add this too, on offense. Far too many times ive pressed button for possesion catch only for my wr to do a RAC instead, or i have guy wide open, press RAC catch ,and the fool drops to the ground for a possession catch , and waits for someone to come touch him. #COMEONMAN


More options for Defensive Disguise


This is a big thing to me.Yes i know you can "bluff blitz" and base align to sometimes slightly disguise your d , and there are about a handfull of plays that shows one set up and runs another. Its not enough.We need much deeper options to Disguise our defenses. Real NFL teams do it alot now to try to throw off the QB.Id like to see presnap adjustments like options to " show man", " show cover 4" , " show cover 2" , "show cover 3" .We already have bluff blitz, but these others need to be added. Allow defenses to pick at anytime to show one thing but run another. Ive been burned numerous times bluffing blitz , but be in a zone, and the guy puts wr on streak and just blows by defenders and gets a deep pass and td.We need better and more options for this.



Touch Passing Improvement


I still feel like this needs more work . It is still rather hard to pass over those high jumping LBs and fit the ball over them but under the safties.You touch pass it and it floats too long and gives defenders too much time to close in and either pick it off or nail the wr as soon as the ball gets there and knock it out.It does not feel like touch passing at all to me.Its either a bullet and picked off by super jumping lbs (still in the game), or it just floats like you put helium in the ball and hangs in air too long to lob it over them.There needs to be more control somehow over how the trajectories of the ball flys.



Making Kicking harder again like it was at launch


Title says it all. It was fine at launch, people just didnt want to adjust to it. I can now make 59 yard fgs all day again and it should not be this way.Put kicking back to how it was at launch this pasts year please!



Defensive Pass Interference


Ok , i know most here are offline guys , so this wouldnt work for you all that well. But I want to see an option to turn on or something, so that DPI penalties only happen based on timing of user input. Why you say ? Let me explain. Last year (madden 16) at launch, our league did heavy testing for custom sliders. We found a number ( i dont recall the exact number it was) on the DPI slider, where it would only trigger the call, when a user attacked ( press button) too soon.You had to time your attack on the ball or wr right or you was drawing a penalty. It did not however call DPI on the cpu.Thus why it would not work for offline as I'm sure you all wouldnt like that ( nor would non-switch online leagues).However for online leagues, and even DC , this would be perfect IMO because it it 100% realistic. If a defender does not time it right, and attacks too early, they will get to the WR before the ball, and thus draw the penalty. Thats realistic. We had it like this for a short time in our league last year until they did an update.After that update we could never , no matter how much we tried, get it to work like that again. We loved it because you could not just hold triangle and wait to get the pick. You had to time it right or pay the penalty.Id really love to see this make its way into the game for all online play at least. I really hate the game just deciding it needs to trigger that when it wants and is based on nothing at all it seems.


Bring Back Live Weather

To me this is a gameplay thing , but id tag along with it, make weather play a bigger role in games. I believe it was madden 10, you could pick live weather , and it was tied to the weather channel.Whatever the current real time weather was in the city your game was in, is what you played in. Id love to see this, it would add so much more variety to the game. Instead of 80% or more games in perfect weather. Also with it, make the force of the weather play the roles it should in the game. Heavy rains, people slipping , balls popping out,Qbs slipping ball out of hands on passes ,field deteriorating , etc. Snow , people loosing footing , trying to change directions and tumbling to the ground, and players feel like they running on ice (instead of that feeling on dry ground). Wind , swirling winds, effecting deeper passes, kicks, etc. I mean lets make weather matter again too along with attributes while we are at it.



Stop all the Warping


This is probably my second biggest pet peeve with Madden. Guys warp unrealistic amount of yards in a half a second alot. I cant count the times ive had a wr 7 yards open ( no one within a 7 yard radius of him) pass the ball, only for some player to warp 5 yards in a half second to pick it off , literally coming out of no where to get it. Same for WRs some times, ball is clearly thrown out of reach only for player to warp right over and catch it last second. This is just a bad look all over the field.I believe it is directly tied to animations , but it just looks so bad.




Player speed issue needs adjusting



To often , i have had a qb with 80 + spd and accel, break out of pocket due to pocket breaking down, only to have a 73 speed 74 accel( or even slowe) DE run him down from behind , before he even gets near line of scrimmage.Qb can have 5 yards on the DE or even DT, yet somehow they get magic super powers from the Flash and bam they all over the QB. This also happens with fast HBs going around the end, and somehow these slower dlinemen can run them down with easy. Should not be happening. Even sometimes they run them down running down field and all i can think is how ? But then again on other hand, ive seen just the opposite. Ive seen slower players have just a step on a faster defender, and somehow the game wont let the defender catch them, even in a 80 yard run. It literally feels like there is a magnet placed on both players with the same charge when this happens is the only way i know to explain it. Like there is this magical unforeseen force, forcing them to not get but so close to one another. Sometimes i really dont get this game at all and how it "figures" up what should happen.

[PlayerMode]

As a Madden player who plays "Be a player" mode most of the time one of the things I'd like to see first and foremost is a fully customisable head model. No more of this generic "White/black skin with head 20/5/3 etc" stuff. If I want my player to look like me then I should be able to do so.

Be a pro mode needs a big overhaul in general. Let us have a combine with position skills that will determine our draft stock. Preseason needs to have more relevance, a training camp with mini-games or something that will impact our depth chart standing. As well as depth chart rating in general being dictated by how well we do in preseason/regular season games. If I'm playing RB and fumble in each game, I'd like to expect to be benched.

There's a tonne of other things I could add but I'd be here all day.

[KingV2k3]

I'd like to see the challenge from the CPU as robust as possible on AP...

They put up quite a challenge on the OOTB version and it somehow became progressively more nerfed with each subsequent patch...

Pretty sure I recall that level of challenge being a focus for the dev team for M17, so I hope that's going to once again be the case, moving forward...

[Bryzine21]

1. More realistic line play. 2. Be able to use the online/play now rosters in your season. Tony Romo hardly played last year but it was a pain to keep him as the backup if cpu was controlling Dallas. 3. Be able to assign your best DB to the opponents best WR. 4. Can we please get the wind arrow pointing the same way the wind is actually blowing and for the wind to correspond to the field flipping every quarter?

[XtremeDunkz]

PLAYER MOVEMENT AND MOMENTUM

This seems to go back and forth in between different versions of the game. Some years it seems like they are going in the right direction with the weight of players but some years, like Madden 17, it just seems more arcade like than ever.

When user controlling a running back or a linebacker momentum, acceleration, and weight mean absolutely nothing. You can switch direction instantly at full speed to make very unrealistic plays. Roaming the middle of the field as a User LB is the most unrealistic thing in the game. You can run with one receiver, and then instantly break off of him to run to another receiver and pick off a pass. It needs to be changed.

[EricFreakingBerry]

I know this is a "gameplay" list, so technically all these posts about CFM/MUT/options are probably a bit off-topic from what they are going for here, but I'm just going to be all-inclusive with my list.


Gameplay

• AI Upgrades: obviously this is broad, but it's been said before. Why do mobile QB's never scramble? Offensive line AI is still woeful at times. Keep working at DB/WR interaction, it's improved over the last few years but it still has a long way to go.
• Commentary/Presentation: not sure why EA has a difficult time making a game that makes you feel like you're part of something bigger in a season, but this needs drastic overhaul. We need better season call-outs, career updates, etc. Fix commentary bugs that turn Madden drafted players into real ones. In 2032 of my franchise, A RUNNING back on my team suddenly became "WR Mohammed Sanu" who retired about a decade earlier.
• Sim vs. Played Sliders: we desperately need this. We need 2 sets of sliders, one for playing games and one for simulating them. I can guarantee there's no way EA could make one set that affects both without it being broken to pieces, so split them off into two separate slider sets. Plus, the gameplay sliders should undergo a major overhaul. There needs to be new sliders added that affect gameplay, and a better explanation of how the sliders work in the menu.
• More Random Plays: we need more trick plays being used by the AI (not just on special teams). When's the last time you ever had an AI team use a flea flicker, or a HB pass? I know it's rare in real life, but it's not NON-EXISTENT. We need botched snaps, guys just dropping the ball themselves without being touched, and more tripping, falling, etc.
• Special Teams: still needs work - punting is now dreadful, and the field goal "mini-game" is still boring. We need guys who specialize in special teams, and not just the returners. They gave us blocks this year, but they need toned down just a bit.

Franchise

• Sim Engine:this goes hand-in-hand with the gameplay vs. sim sliders mentioned earlier. We need the ability to tweak sim output badly. It's aggravating not being able to fluctuate rushing vs. passing eras, fixing sack number totals without editing every QB's pocket awareness trait, etc.
• More Immersion: Super Bowl champions lists, improved record books, year-by-year team records, MVP winners, etc. over the course of the franchise.
• Easier "God-like" control: both online and offline there needs to be settings for people who want FULL POWER over their franchise mode. You shouldn't have to become an owner for all 32-teams and use the slow toggle to go from one team to the next to edit things or fix horrendous situations. Allow a setting that gives a commissioner (online) or just you (offline) the ability to trade players from other teams when the AI makes horrible FA and draft decisions, or fix schemes if they don't remotely fit the personnel.
• Scouting/Draft: still needs work, scouting system is too easy, should be more about learning the intangibles, more flexibility in the ratings and positions, guys at QB that might be worth moving to WR. Draft process needs to be more exciting. More visual content to digest, more banter by analysts, more presentation hype around traded picks. Bring draft stories into the combine/pro days/draft process instead of hidden away in a menu.
• Ditch L/R designations: we need more scheme-based positional depth charts, the whole L/R thing is just meant to simplify the game.
• Compensatory picks: it was in the game once, and it's not anymore. Nothing else needs to be said.
• Staff: another thing that used to be in the game, and isn't anymore. How this ever got taken out is beyond me. Coordinators play a huge part in the success of a team, and the fact that it's all just "under the hood" is ridiculous. And make sure when you bring this back that all the carousel/scheme bugs are fixed so that 3-4 teams aren't looking for Run Stopping OLBs and Speed Rushing DEs.

[Junior Moe]

Gameplay wise I just want to see significantly more "signature styles". The QB throwing motions now trigger more. That's a start. But I want to see discernibly different running styles, catch styles, tackle types. Kind of like NBA 2K's dunk packages. I want to see certain receivers have access to only certain catch styles and types. Possession guys may catch balls with their body and only have access to certain "body catch" animations. Same thing with running backs. I want LB's and DT's to have more forceful (within the confines of the NFL player safety rules) tackles while poor tackling DB's have wrap and hold style tackles. I just want more player personality overall I guess.

[SIR924]

I would like to see more authentication in the game.
1. Running animations, and better Physics.
2. Better AI, no player should be doing nothing on the field.
3. Regular season mode without all the franchise business, just using most current roster.
4.Sideline players with same look as on field players.
5.More than one commentary cast, have one main cast, and then generic, at least the game won't sound the same.
6.Make kicking game based on real special team stats.example: if a team is good like the Chiefs return guy, then the blocking for that team should have a small advantage of better blocking than a team who doesn't cover as well. But make sure it's not over powered.
7. Make stats more valuable to real life teams, this is especially when playing online. Users go to hurry up offense in first quarter or entire game, with teams that don't do this in real life except for 2 minutes offense or behind in fourth quarter. If a team strength is the hurry up offense, then the stats should favor that team, if not, and a user is doing it the entire game, then it should affect the stats of that team.